[FINISHED]Phobos Tower Colony

Download (3.96 MB)
Replaces MAP01 of Doom II. ZDoom only!

I've made a few maps over the years but none that I'd really call releasable. Except this one. Anyway, I was playing Doom the Way Id Did Lost Episodes last week, and playing all these maps in the style of John Romero's E1 maps made me realize that every previous attempt I had made at Doom mapping was doing it wrong. I took on making an E1 map to learn Doom mapping more or less all over again, and I think I succeeded. Here I've tried to recreate some of Id's style with non-orthogonal walls, interconnected layouts, and minimalist detail (though it is still a bit more detailed than the original E1). I'd say this map represents around 16 hours of work. It's a bit larger and tougher than an original E1 map, but not particularly hard even on UV, and should take 12-15 minutes to complete. Two new enemies have been added, Eriance's Watcher and my own Squire, selected to fit within Doom E1 gameplay constraints (no SSG, no plasma, no BFG). This map is still beta quality--while the layout is finished and gameplay more or less final, there's still quite a bit of polishing left to do, especially with texture alignment and improving the appearance of the outdoor areas. I'm a long way from being the next 40oz or even matching the quality of my own Wolfenstein maps but I think it captures some of the Id magic.

CREDITS:
FuzzballFox, Enjay, EarthQuake, CaptainToenail for Doom Potpourri textures
Cage for Cage's Texture Pack
SargeBaldy and Id Software for the Doom 1 texture pack
Eriance for the Watcher sprites
KDIZD Team for Hell Knight sprites
Bobby Prince for level music (Duke Nukem II)
Phobos Directive team for tall sky and plain STARBR texture

http://www.sendspace.com/file/52t4or Updated 4/6/14 with changes:

* More health added throughout the level
* Non-animated switches re-animated (This is what happens when you use WinTex to merge texture wads...)
* Switch inside the pillar secret replaced because it was not worth trying to fix the Doom 1 texture
* Texture behind a lift replaced with a better one
* Squire fireballs make sounds
* Medikit near the secret switch in the tower moved out a bit
* Tower secret has a more obvious cue
* Radsuits added to the first nukage area (one on HMP/UV, two on HNTR)
* Blue key and trap fixed for all difficulties

I've still got to figure out what I'm going to do about the outdoor area.

I enjoyed it. Random notes:
- For some reason little flying things didn't want to go down to the slime near the blue key, could be seen as a bug.
- Sector 110 shouldn't be tagged I guess.
- I think yellow baron's pain sound doesn't match his death sound: way too different pitch. Also his death animation is too slow compared to other monsters', a little jarring inconsistency.
- In the outdoor area the sky is blocking the imp tower for me (I'm playing in software mode if that matters).
- Didn't like the secret area with a mysterious switch. Maybe forcing the player to revesit every room to see what happened isn't the best reward for finding a secret. Well, not really forcing but you get what I'm saying. I wasn't happy to find that secret.

This level's got an interesting feel, thanks to the oldschool-ish leveldesign/gameplay, the music and a sparsely used modern texture pack. The pack and other ZDoom thingies weren't really necessary and the map could have worked just fine without them, but well. I've got an impression that Squire sometimes blandly scratches the air instead of throwing a fireball at me. There was quite low ammo in the map. The big outdoor area featured too many monsters sniping the player from above or from far away, I don't think it's the best, I didn't bother killing them all (I've run out of ammo anyway). But overally I liked the map, it was compact and intuitive and with a strange classic-like vibe, good job!

Updated again: http://www.sendspace.com/file/3ivys7

This time the two background towers have been improved; they're no longer featureless boxes. The imp tower is no longer blocked from view at the beginning of the outdoor area.

I'm toying with the idea of making an episode of maps like this (8 levels) with this as E1M5.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/xma3ie

This will probably be the last update unless I complete an episode of E1-type maps in which case this will be rereleased as E1M5 of that set.

Changes:
* Fixed the edges of the building exteriors so they don't look fake (special thanks to Xaser for showing me how to do this!)
* Improved texture alignment, especially in the STARBR room and computer maze
* Jumping and crouching disabled
* Plain "STARBR1" version of STARBR added, sky replaced with tall mouselook-friendly version

Walkthrough commentary for your map. It was pretty awesome for a "beginner" map, and it's simply nice overall.

Thanks for not making actually tough situations.

I used only those types of monsters because of the Episode 1 feeling, later maps in this episode will have chaingunners and Hell Knights (though there were three Hell Knights in this map on HMP like you played, and five on UV), but no cacos or Lost Souls. And of course Barons of Hell will be in E1M8 but they'll be much, much more deadly than the original Barons.

Also if you want more monsters, play on UV, it bumps the monster count up by around 50% and the tower fight becomes considerably trickier.

Woolie Wool said:

I used only those types of monsters because of the Episode 1 feeling, later maps in this episode will have chaingunners and Hell Knights (though there were three Hell Knights in this map on HMP like you played, and five on UV), but no cacos or Lost Souls. And of course Barons of Hell will be in E1M8 but they'll be much, much more deadly than the original Barons.

Also if you want more monsters, play on UV, it bumps the monster count up by around 50% and the tower fight becomes considerably trickier.

Yeah, I thought of that this is the reason. Also, I didn't dare playing on harder difficulty - I'm a terrible player while recording.

Did you enjoy my video BTW?

Yes, though it was a little disappointing that you didn't find a single secret. Aside from the very last secret (which I added at the last minute) I tried to avoid "adventure game logic" secrets.

As for the name, it's something of a tribute to a memorable and ridiculously hard level from Descent.